Members of the Taoyuan Flight Attendants’ Union yesterday urged the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) to amend what they said are outdated aircraft operation regulations, adding that airlines take advantage of the regulations to overwork their cabin crew.
Union members staged a protest outside the Mandarin Oriental Taipei, where the International Aviation Safety Summit is being held.
Airline workers have gone on strike three times over the past three years, which has a lot to do with conflicts between the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) and the regulations, union president Chao Kang (趙剛) said.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
There is also confusion over whether to adopt the law or the regulations when scheduling the flight hours of cabin crew, Chao said.
The former ensures that workers can reliably provide services under sound physical and mental health conditions, while the latter sets the boundaries on how cabin crew can perform their duties under abnormal situations, such as during a natural disaster, he added.
The nation’s airlines have often used the regulations when deploying their cabin crew, which has allowed the airlines to overwork their employees, Chao said.
The CAA has been allowing or encouraging the carriers to use the regulations when deploying cabin crew, he added.
Taiwan lags behind the EU and US in terms of standards for regulating the flight hours of flight attendants and pilots, union deputy secretary Chou Sheng-kai (周聖凱) said.
The EU sets the flight hour limit for cabin crew according to the time of day in which a flight is dispatched, Chou said.
As for rest time during flights of 12 hours or more, the EU code requires that cabin crew be given a break of between 90 minutes and three-and-a-half hours, Chou said.
However, in Taiwan, cabin crew can be made to work 20 hours with only a one-hour break, he said.
Furthermore, red-eye flights in Taiwan are defined as those departing between 2am and 5am, whereas in the EU and the US that period is between 2am and 6am, Chou said.
The latter provides better protection for flight attendants, he said.
Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材) said that the regulations, like similar regulations around the world, have been stipulated by the CAA based on International Civil Aviation Organization Annex 6.
The standards for regulating flight hours in Taiwan are already stricter than those in other nations, he added.
“The issues of flight hours and on-duty breaks have been discussed during the two labor strikes this year. We think the best way to address them is to take a look at the flight routes one at a time and discuss the reasonable number of cabin crew members for each route,” Wang said.
The CAA would also handle complaints from cabin crew if they think airlines’ arrangements for certain routes are unreasonable, he added.
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